In the old world, the operating system was the center of the computing universe. In today’s modern application age, container platforms fill the space once occupied by the OS. That fact helps to explain why so much cash and code is pouring into Kubernetes.

What it doesn’t explain, however, is why comparatively few companies are investing heavily enough in Kubernetes. Given the central role Kubernetes seems destined to play in shaping enterprise infrastructure, we should see more competition to contribute, given that more code tends to equal more influence in open source. Oddly, only Google and Red Hat seem to be playing to win in Kubernetes, based on contribution counts.

Coding Kubernetes for cash and influence

Google tops the Kubernetes charts, which isn’t too surprising. After all, Google, in a master stroke of open source brilliance, first released the project as a way to give outsiders access to its internal container management smarts. Google isn’t a charitable foundation, however, and this act helped to position its cloud as the premier place to run Kubernetes workloads. “Build with containers on your laptop,” was Google’s call to developers, “but scale them on Google Cloud Platform.”

But not if Red Hat gets there first.

Call it dumb luck or shrewd strategy, but Red Hat has rocketed up the Kubernetes contributor charts over the past few years, determined not to miss out on “the new enterprise Linux,” as Red Hat’s Daniel Riek has styled it.